Raising your children is not in my job description.

[Food Lady]

I've had moms say I would have the kids arrested, or some such. That's a lie, really. People lying to kids and dragging us in. Disgusting.

[raudf]

It's one thing to teach them that cops will get them if they are truly being bad, but it's another to use it as an excuse to not have to parent them yourself. Yes, I have heard the dreaded, "If you don't behave that lady will come get you!" from some failure at parenting. It took a lot of willpower to not say, "You're damn skippy I will. For I am the punisher of sucky parenting! I am the finder of good children needing proper upbringing! I am the CALLER OF CPS!!!"

Seriously, the only time I have ever used the phrase, "A police officer will arrest/come get you," is when teaching that it's bad to hurt others or steal, because that is what really WILL HAPPEN. Of course, this happened after mid-raudf learned that cops were good guys who helped other and made sure that bad guys didn't do bad things again.

[dalesys]

... because you are not really my brother anyway... Actually, you were not born here. You were brought here by the police..
[/Cos]

[fireheart]

I've had my mother threaten to put me in respite care when I was a kid. She also threatened to donate stuff in my room to the Kosovo refugees because my room was a mess.

-.-

[KhirasHY]

*pick up phone*

It's for you, it's the neurosis of your children calling from 10 years in the future.

*stare*

[Kristev]

My mother frequently threatened to have me institutionalized as a child.

When I became older, the threats mutated into being sent to my father or to a group home.

And, even today, she still screams at the drop of a hat, most frequently at my brother and I.

She's got bi-polar, and even though she's on meds so she's better now, she still thinks it gives her the right to treat everyone else badly whenever she pleases.

My relationship with her is bad because I'm gay and have Asperger's syndrome, and she refuses to accept either of those things. So I had to grow up with her using her fundamentalist Christian powers trying to remove the autism from me my entire childhood, going so far once as to subject me to an exorcism. Even today the woman still thinks it's possible to go out and hunt demons.

I wouldn't have anything to do with her, but I have no job and soon no other place to live.

I just hate it. I spent so much of my adult life trying to get away from my crazy family and learn at least partial independence only to have me constantly thrown back into her hands. I can't stand it.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I like to speak kindly to children when I hear parents being toxic like that. I'd like to believe a kind word will help them along.

Same here. It may not seem like a big gesture, but at least there's the hope that it helps that child's day be a little more bearable.

[Dadeo]

My mom, who works at CAPS, said "we don't take bad kids from good parents, we take bad parents from good kids."